The ambulanceman gave Ali the job of keeping his mother alive. The 12-year-old did what he could. "Mama, mama, don't go to sleep," he sobbed, gently patting her face beneath her chin. Behind her black veil, her eyelids were slowly sinking. "I'm going to die," she sighed. "Don't say that, mama," Ali begged, and then slid to the ground in tears.No more firing rockets into Israel for you, mama.
Three passengers sitting in the third row were killed instantly, including Ali's grandmother. Sixteen other passengers were wounded. In recent days, families like the Sha'itas are bearing the brunt of Israel's air campaign and its efforts to rid the area of civilians before ground operations. A day after Israel's deadline for people to leave their homes and flee north of the Litani river, roads which in ordinary times wind lazily through tobacco fields and banana groves have been turned into highways of death. Plumes of smoke rise in the distance, and the road in front of us offers up signs of closer peril: car wrecks, still smoking after Israeli strikes, and abandoned vehicles with shattered rear windows. Some were direct hits by Israeli aircraft. Others were drivers who had lost control. Overhead is the menacing roar of Israeli warplanes and the buzz of drones tracking every movement.So, Hillary, if this happened to you at 12, what would you want to do at 20? Knit sweaters with 'I love Israel and America' on the front?
We endorse this. America bankrolls this. America rushes weapons over lest Israel's relentless slaughter be slowed by, god forbid, a lack of weaponry.
Meanwhile in the UK, someone's breaking the lockstep:
Mr Howells spent Saturday in Beirut seeing bombed-out ruins. Talking of civilian deaths and the destruction of infrastructure, he said: "These have not been surgical strikes. And it's very, very difficult I think to understand the kind of military tactics that have been used." Yesterday, in an interview in the northern Israeli city of Haifa, Mr Howells said the Israelis "know only too well it is not enough just to seek a military victory, they have got to win a wider political battle. That means they have got to think very hard about those children who are dying. It is not enough to say it is unfortunate collateral damage. Every person who has got a mobile phone, every person who can take a photograph of somebody being blown to bits, or a child with a imb missing, is a reporter now".Everyone with a blog. Everyone with a conscience.
13 comments:
I read your blog most days, and with interest - I despair for my many Arab and Jewish friends, but think right, wrong and who started it are absolutely irrelevant. This has been going on since 1920, so why should this time be any different?
My prayer to God would be please God, abolish religion, all of it, now...
Thanks for your blog
I would like to surgical strike the idiot who thought up the phrase 'surgical strike'. There has never been precision bombing in any war and especially this one.
No the Israelis started this.
There was an unprovoked Isralie military incursion into the Gaza strip no so long ago, where Palestinian civilians died.
So they started it then,as they started it when they set up the Zionist state israel.
Furthermore, there is a wider context to what is happening now, think backSept 11and the events subsequent to that. Think..IRAN, nuclear weapons.... think USa and its undying love for israel.
Like many people, the twocoutnrie si hatethemost are Israel and the USA.
"Oh and the reason Ali will become a terrorist (the way every family member of a civilian victim of war has always become a terrorist) is that he comes from a degraded culture where he is taught in school and by his immam that the Jews are descended from apes and pigs, and his path to salvation lies in killing them."
Oh for fuck's sake don't be a robot.
The reason Ali may become a terrorist is because the Israelis murdered his mum. The fact that you would even try to argue that one shows just how detached from empathy the right are becoming.
If I called jewish culture "degraded" because so many kids are taught that they are racially entitled to certain lands because, no less, their god assisted them in a genocidal purge of the peaceful happy inhabitants (read the myth of canaan), I would of course be called anti semitic ad nauseum.
I agree with Bede. Abolish all religion and we'd get rid of most of the conflict in the world. And if we determined that militarism was a crime, that would get rid of the rest.
Oh Happy Day!
Splatts, they killed his mum.
If I held a racial or religious group responsible for killing my mum I'd give it a good chance I'd grow up inclined towards revenge.
Something that without doubt goes both ways, and continues to feed these irrational conflicts.
Poor Pat, still trying to flog the Israeli propaganda line.
Unfortunately, 24 hours a day, the television (CNN, BBC, SBS, etc) shows clearly what is happening in spite of the best efforts of Israeli-apologists to twist the truth, to rationalise their brutality.
Pat your question is reasonable but might depend on the level of education I got. Certainly at a high critical level Hizbollah are repulsive and must carry some blame for this, as well as terrorism towards Israeli civilians.
THis is such a victory for them because Israel have come down to their level - but done it much more effectively, killing so many more civilians than Hizbollah could and watching as Israel does all their propaganda work for them.
Proving Hizbollah are shitheads is not hard, i've never argued with this.
Proving that this justifies crimes against humanity is night on impossible however, it is virtually a non sequiter, an argument that because one set of terrorists hides among civilians you are entitled to punish those civilians.
What I meant to add in the first paragraph is that at best, with a highly critical and educated perspective allowing me to direct blame towards Hizbollah, I would hate both Israel (and the Israelis who are overwhelmingly supporting this attack) AND Hizbollah.
Still not a fantastic result from Israel's point of view.
Pat, I have seen many, many hours of television footage of bus bombings in Israel. Whenever they occur they are heavily covered on CNN,BBC, etc as part of their normal pro-Israeli bias. Thanks anyway!
I think this Hamas/Hezbollah smearing is unfortunate. Both groups rose out of the ranks of downtrodden civilians following the brutality of Israeli occupation (39 years in the Palestinian Territories and 22 years in Lebanon). They are a civilian militia for Christ's sake. Where else are they supposed to live?
And why don't you admit you're merely another blinkered Israeli-apologist who hasn't the wit to see that the fanatical Zionists are bringing about their own destruction.
You both are verging on becoming excessively interested in playing man over ball; with the greatest of respect I suggest a return to the ball.
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